2. Homophobes and misogynists. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s this group was actively courted by rightwing hate radio hosts like Limbaugh with his "Hillary Clinton Testicle Lockbox" and "Feminazi" slurs. There are enough men insecure about their own sexuality that hating on women and queer folk became a popular sport, particularly as the women's and gay rights movements gained steam during that era.
3. Lower-middle-class working white people. This was the result of genius branding largely promoted by Lee Atwater back in the day. Exploit the brands of NASCAR, the NFL, and Country Music, which were reliably Democratic until the 1980s, causing working-class white people to think the GOP was their home.
4. Upper middle class white people. Ironically, this is the group that's been most badly screwed by Republican tax policies, but they vote reliably Republican in any case. While billionaires pay only around 3% income taxes these days because of loopholes they paid Republicans to drill into law, people like surgeons making a few hundred thousand a year often pay 50% or more in taxes. Which, of course, makes them all the more vulnerable to the GOP's tax-cut mantra, even if this group typically only gets a small slice of the cuts.
5. Authoritarian followers. This group has blossomed since the Trump campaign of 2016. These are people openly skeptical of democracy, instead wanting a strong father figure to lead them and tell them how to think, act, and vote. They make up the majority of the January 6th traitors (although there's a lot of overlap with the racists), and are ready to follow the next authoritarian leader who replaces Trump (a position for which DeSantis, Hawley, Scott, Cotton, and Cruz are competing).
Because the GOP has no unifying philosophy other than hate, fear, and kowtowing to billionaires and their giant corporations, the politicians who make up its governing class are similarly fractured.
Neoliberalism was their uniting philosophy in 1980 and Reagan cemented that system into place with his presidency: it still controls most of the American political and economic system and dictates most modern Supreme Court decisions as well.
But, while they don't generally recognize the word neoliberalism, that system which includes offshoring jobs, massive tax cuts for the rich ("trickle-down"), privatization of government functions, and gutting the social safety net has fallen out of favor among most voters. (See: The Hidden History of Neoliberalism: How Reaganism Gutted America.)
This has left the GOP rudderless. Their persistent shout-outs to racists and homophobes "- including efforts to ban books and the teaching of American History "- have helped Republican politicians win primary elections, but have hurt Republicans electorally with their better-educated and higher income voters.
Similarly, their embrace of Catholic anti-abortion doctrine has pushed away many formerly Republican female voters while failing to further energize or increase the numbers of the fringe that holds this issue with fanatic zeal.
As a result, other than Senator Rick Scott's proposals for ending Social Security and Medicare within 5 years and more calls for tax cuts, Republican politicians in state and federal office have been reduced to simply opposing everything Democrats do or want to do.
Republicans are now so devoted to reflexively opposing anything Democrats embrace that they literally led hundreds of thousands of their own followers to their deaths by ridiculing masks and vaccines during the worst pandemic in more than a century.
This lack of a clear ideological foundation across the GOP has opened the door to:
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*Predatory grifters (Mehmet Oz, Matt Gaetz, Rick Scott),
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*Wannabee stars and fame-seekers (Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Ted Cruz), and
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*Putin-style autocrats (Blake Masters, Doug Mastriano, Ron DeSantis).
Donald Trump, filling all three categories simultaneously, predictably became the "King of the Thieves" in the GOP: those who aspire to replace him are discovering it's a damn hard act to follow, making Republican voters even more vulnerable to each of those three GOP factions.
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